


Case LP-9

by tisfan



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Agents of Shield AU, Love Potion/Spell, M/M, Misunderstandings, Partners to Lovers, Pining, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:26:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21864445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: Fresh out of the Academy, Shield Agents Stark and Barnes are assigned as partners to a difficult case.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Tony Stark
Comments: 51
Kudos: 288
Collections: 2019 WinterIron_Holiday_Exchange





	Case LP-9

**Author's Note:**

  * For [asphxdels](https://archiveofourown.org/users/asphxdels/gifts).



> Love Potion #9 is an old, old rock song about an aphrodisiac

“Agents Barnes,” Fury called out, “and Stark. Case LP-9. Pick up your file and go see the Quartermaster.”

“You’ve got to be _shitting_ me,” Bucky said, turning around to stare at Agent Stark. Why the hell would anyone put them together? Rookie agents or not-- Bucky’s diploma was still in the mail somewhere and Stark was wet behind the ears, a baby-genius who would have gotten his actual diploma four years ago, but wasn’t allowed to be an active field agent until just after his twenty-first birthday. Which was three days ago.

“Looks like they want to break you early,” Clint said.

“Or see if you cut and run,” Natasha added. “They might as well get it out of the way.”

“I know you hate Stark, pal,” Steve put in. “Our first jobs are supposed to be easy, so you’ll get it over with and put in for a change of partner.”

The problem was not, in fact, that Bucky hated Stark. He kinda wished he did, sometimes. It would have made things easier. Stark was brilliant and beautiful, daring and dazzling, sarcastic, smart mouthed and sophisticated. Also, he was lean and wiry, with a gorgeous smile, had biceps for days and an ass that wouldn’t quit. In short, he was _exactly_ Bucky’s type, and Bucky would have very much liked to take him out, and then take him to bed and then just take him.

The problem was: Stark hated _Bucky_. 

They’d been first and second in all their classes, both sweating to edge the other out. Instead of breeding respect or even friendly rivalry, Stark seemed to take it as a personal insult that Bucky was, sometimes, better than Stark.

 _Spoiled_ , Steve had called him.

But Bucky knew the truth. It was hard, giving up that number one spot when you felt like it was all you had _._ People respected Bucky -- he was poor, but he was really good at what he did. The best. The guy you always wanted on your team. And he came out of nowhere to make Stark look bad. It wasn’t Bucky’s fault, he often told himself, but he couldn’t back down, either. 

It wasn’t even that Stark looked bad; he made Bucky work like hell for every point, strain for every accolade. It’s just, everyone assumed that it was easy for Stark. Everyone assumed that Stark “had it coming”. Everyone wanted to see Stark taken down a peg. So they got compared all the time, set up.

Bucky didn’t blame Stark for hating him.

He just wished it could be different.

“I’ll figure it out,” he said, giving Steve a clap on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, we’ll be fine. How hard can it be?”

They were brand new agents. Surely it would be a peach of an assignment. Low hanging fruit.

Stark hadn’t even waited for him after the briefing and file sharing. Instead, Bucky found himself trudging all the way over to the Vault after Stark had bolted for the computers.

“We’re going to die,” Stark said, as soon as Bucky pulled up next to him. “Fortunately--” He plugged something into the side of one of Shield’s terminals “--my girl Friday might be able to help us out. Download it all, baby girl, and we’ll see what we’ve got.”

“Are you hacking Shield’s systems?”

“Nobody says _hack_ anymore, what are you, twelve?”

“You are hacking Shield’s systems.”

“I’m getting access to relevant mission data, namely the six other teams, that’s twelve agents, if you can’t count that high, for our case,” Stark said. “Which they don’t want us to have and I’m wondering why, since one of the key parts of the mission is recovering those agents.”

Bucky flipped open his file.

“You haven’t even read it yet?” Stark wondered.

“No, I was busy chasing some asshole across the quad,” Bucky retorted. “Now shut up, I’m readin’.” Jesus, why did Stark always have to make things so hard?

The mission briefing was quick, if uninformative. Infiltrate the enemy fortifications, neutralize the enemy, rescue twelve agents, dossiers attached.

“Get in, get the goods, get out, what’s hard.”

“This--” Stark said, waving at the screen.

_Love Potion Number Nine_

Enemy designation: Aphrodite (aliases and legal designation unknown, suspect extradimensional origin)

Abilities: pheromone weapon results in targeted allies to become intensely emotionally compromised. Easily neutralized by Aphrodite during sudden onset of compulsatory copulation. 

Notes: Send Stark and Barnes; suspect current attachment status will neutralize the pheromone weapon.

Bucky blinked. “Excuse me?” It wasn’t that he didn’t understand, it was that he was refusing belief.

“In English,” Tony said. “She’s got a sex pollen gun and Fury thinks it won’t affect us because we loathe each other.”

“Right.”

Bucky was so, so screwed.

* * *

Tony was so, so screwed.

It was bad enough that they got assigned as partners, where it was going to be just that much harder to keep a lid on his damn crush, but--

Sex pollen.

It was supposed to be a joke, a theoretical, but SHIELD had in fact, given the rookies a few lectures on it. Apparently it was a thing that happened out in the field. People getting hosed down with chemicals or injected by some alien insect, or someone put a spell. Love potions. They were as old as the idea of magic. Possibly, Tony thought, for a reason.

They had psych courses on it; what to do if you get infected with one, and how to handle relationships with your fellow agents after you all got naked and did the nasty.

They’d even had a few guest lecturers come in to talk about the effects, long term, and what it did to team morale.

Tony wasn’t sure why he hadn’t believed it was a thing that could happen, until, apparently, he was looking at the possibility right in the face. Or in the groin, more exactly.

Tony maybe, possibly, more than once, jerked it, while thinking of getting railed by his seriously annoying, competitive asshole fellow agent in training. But while he wanted Bucky -- god, did he want Bucky -- he didn’t really want it like _that_. A compulsion.

And what did that mean, _suspect current attachment status_? Was that Fury’s way of saying that because they hated each other -- or at least, the whole campus thought they hated each other -- that the LP-9 wouldn’t _work_?

Because if that were true, well, Fury was operating with the wrong information.

And Tony wasn’t about to correct him. He couldn’t really see going into Fury’s office and saying “Hey, I don’t think you should put me on the LP-9 case because I really want to jump Barnes’ bones, alright Director.”

For that matter, Tony wasn’t sure he was all that keen on the idea of Bucky getting nailed by _someone else_ while under some stupid sex pollen.

“Friday, show me what we’ve got on previously tried and failed countermeasures,” Tony said.

“I’m on it, boss,” Friday told him. They weren’t entirely sure what caused the effect, but Tony read through the list of agents, their prior relationships, and the attempted methods used to try to nullify the effects.

Gender didn’t seem to matter, nor previously stated sexual orientation. It wasn’t ingested, inhaled, or activated through skin contact, as it went through advanced chem suits and air filtration gear. It didn’t seem to be any sort of ballistic weaponry, either. 

The few video clips Friday could scrounge from SHIELD’s stores showed the target pointing a rod of some sort in the direction of the agents. No light shows or beams of energy, no radiation signatures or chemical emissions.

“Wait, boss, I’m pickin’ up a spike in cosmic rays just as she uses the device,” Friday said. “Directional. I ken the effects aren’t comin’ from her pointer, she’s--”

“Painting the targets,” Tony murmured. “So, there’s something in space that’s causing this?”

“It would appear so.”

“Great,” Tony said. “You think some sort of particle shielding would keep it off us long enough to get her subdued?”

“No one’s tried it yet, boss,” Friday said, hesitating. “Which is no guarantee.”

“Better than nothing,” Tony said. “Maybe I can make a robot to take her on.”

“We don’t need an amorous Ultron,” Friday said. “Remember Jocasta?”

“Only every single time I see Pym,” Tony muttered. “Okay, robots are out. Let’s see about some ray shielding. Main deflector dish online?”

“Aye, Captain,” Friday said.

* * *

“That was easier’n I expected,” Bucky said, looking down at the goddess he just cold-cocked. “Frankly, I don’t much like hittin’ women.”

“Simply a matter of good tech over bad magic,” Stark told him.

“Uh, boss--” Bucky wasn’t sure that he ever bothered to tell Stark that he could, in fact, hear all the little conversations that went on between Friday and the Iron Man suit. “It didn’t work.”

“Sure it did,” Bucky said, pointing at the woman sprawled on the pavement. “She’s not wavin’ her freaky wand around and castin’ love spells all over the place.” He called in some backup to come remove her to more secure facilities, and he also picked up the wand and placed it in one of the sample bags. Really the whole thing had been pretty anticlimactic. 

Stark had secured himself in his lab for several hours, came back with devices that made a particle shield over their heads (or, he said he did, at any rate, and Bucky believed him because he trusted Stark’s tech), and they went after her. Actually getting close enough to her to hit her had been the work of about eight minutes.

And she’d gone down like she was in the bar, yelling Timber. (Bucky kept his pop culture references to himself; he’d already heard Stark yelling at Parker about a limit.)

“According to my readings, she did, in fact, cast the freaky all over the place,” Friday said. “You two just were not affected. Your bodies are saturated with it.”

“How is that _possible_?” Stark was eyeing Bucky warily, like he expected to get jumped and-- Bucky wasn’t sure, sexed up or something.

“Incoming message from Director Fury,” Friday said, instead of answering the question. Friday projected a little transparent image of the director onto the pavement. Bucky wondered if there was a reason the projection was only four feet tall. Looking down on Fury was intensely satisfying, though, he had to admit. Stark probably did it on purpose.

“Well, I see it worked,” Fury said

“Target subdued,” Bucky confirmed.

“What worked?” Stark growled. “Our suspected _feelings_ for each other?”

“Stark, I have asked you nicely to stay out of our files,” Fury snapped. 

“What are you talking about?” Bucky wondered.

“Fury thinks that-- the fact that you hate me-- means it didn’t work, the particles, whatever they are, are cancelled out by strong loathing,” Stark suggested, looking both sad and hostile at the same time. “Fun thing to read in my own damn file.”

“Tony, that’s… that’s not true at all,” Bucky said, stammering. “If it didn’t work on people who hate each other, Agents Loki and Lewis would have been _fine_.” _And besides,_ Bucky thought _, I might have a monster crush on you. The fact that you hate me--_

“Agent Barnes is correct,” Fury said. “It’s not negated by animosity. In fact, according to our current -- proven -- theory, it will not affect people who are, excuse my saying so, already in love. It can only produce a veneer of desire and affection. It can’t create it.”

“What?”

“I’m saying, this is going to be an awkward conversation between the two of you, and the rest of us don’t want to hear it. Fury out.”

Tony flittered his gaze up to Bucky’s face.

“You-- don’t hate me? Your feelings--”

“My feelings? Well, they’re quite the opposite,” Bucky said. He swallowed hard. “You?”

“Fury’s right. This is a conversation no one else wants to hear,” Tony admitted. “But uh--” he offered one gauntleted hand. “Maybe we don’t have to talk much?”

“Talk later,” Bucky agreed, pulling Tony in.

For a first kiss, it was everything that Bucky hoped it could be; soft, warm, just a little tentative. Turning into a passionate, needy embrace.

No love potion required.


End file.
